Inajo Davis Chappell

It's not just that Inajo Davis Chappell marches to the beat of a different drummer. It's that for her, the drummer might as well be playing the tambourine.

“There's nothing about me that's typical,” said Ms. Chappell, chair of the nonprofit and school law groups and co-chair of the diversity committee at Cleveland law firm Ulmer & Berne. “I can do anything on any given day. I march to my own arrhythmic, erratic, crazy beat.”

And Ms. Chappell knows something about beats. The daughter of two music teachers who taught in the Cleveland schools, she has a piano in her home and plays to relax.

Much of her time in school, though, wasn't spent in the classroom.

A graduate of Hathaway Brown School and Yale University and with a law degree from Columbia University, Ms. Chappell worked as in-house counsel to the business unit of the Cleveland Municipal School District, as it was known at the time, for more than five years after a three-year stint at Ulmer & Berne.

She worked with purchasing, procurement, food and other businesses, and said it was one of the “most interesting and most fun jobs” she had because it was always something new.

“I felt like we were helping kids,” she said.

But seeing little room for growth, Ms. Chappell returned to Ulmer & Berne.

There, she managed to build a broad-based practice that touched on any number of specialties. Ms. Chappell has experience in real estate acquisition and financing, community development projects and construction; does public and corporate finance and contracts and commercial law; and works with school contract preparation, competitive bidding compliance and special education, in addition to the groups she chairs.

“I never want to be pigeonholed in only one area. It would just bore me to tears, frankly,” she said. “I tend to be a slightly obsessive person. I'm a little bit fanatical. I'm very tenacious, very driven, very self-motivated.”

Ms. Chappell said in addition to her aptitude for problem-solving, and the gratification she got from doing so, some of those qualities were the basis of her interest in law. They also helped her become a partner at the firm in 1999.

And after spending years volunteering and serving on the boards of a wide array of organizations, Ms. Chappell said she formed her legal practice in a way that allowed her to focus on the educational and social service work she enjoys on a more regular basis.

Ms. Chappell said she still finds her work with the school district to be particularly rewarding. Her husband, John, is a special education teacher in the Cleveland schools. The couple live in Solon.

Though she was born in New Orleans, Ms. Chappell was raised in East Cleveland. Both her Louisiana roots and her parents' profession have left her a fan of jazz and Broadway musicals, she said. She tries to make it to New York to see several musicals a year.

While Ms. Chappell was recruited by several Wall Street law firms out of law school, she said she preferred visiting New York than living there, and considers Cleveland to be home. She was a board member at Hathaway Brown, where as a student she was encouraged to march differently and taught to be intellectually curious and “high- achieving, but not obnoxious.”

These days, much of her time that isn't spent at the law firm is spent working on the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, where she was just appointed to a second term. Ms. Chappell also chairs the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners. She has considered running for office herself, some day.

A political science and Afro-American studies major at Yale, Ms. Chappell said she always has been a political junkie, but isn't sure if she wants to be in the throes of the political world.

Jane Platten, director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said one of Ms. Chappell's best qualities is the “reality” of who she is. In her company, there is “no guessing,” Ms. Platten said.

“She has her own opinion, her own thinking, she stands on her own,” Ms. Platten said. “It serves her very well.”